Gross-out parenting moments

Before I had kids, everything made me squeamish. Poop, barf, blood–all that stuff grossed me out. Now, I’m a pro. I’ve scooped little turds out of the bathtub, cleaned numerous car seat covers doused in throw-up, and I even sucked the snot out of my daughter’s nose once. Poor thing! She could barely breathe.

But I do believe that we (parents) have our limits. The other day I was talking with a dad who said that his son’s ear drum ruptured and liquid started trickling out of his ears. “Having a son has definitely raised my tolerance for dealing with bodily fluids,” my friend Jeremy said. “But this gave me that feeling in my stomach that I got during middle school health class when we learned what a hernia was.”

I think I hit my limit the other weekend when I was driving my 3-year-old son, Dante, and my 29-year-old brother, Peter, from San Francisco to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. After we had been in the car for two hours and we were pulling off the freeway, Dante got sick. Fine. I can deal with that. But then my brother got sick minutes after. And that’s when my stomach started to churn.